Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway (9 page)

I sat up straight. “You're kidding!”

He poured me some tea and handed it over. “This shocks you?”

“Yes!” I took a sip. “Are you telling me there used to be houses where the
mall
is?”

He nodded. “The mall, the parking lots, the lawyers' offices…that whole area used to be houses.”

“And what? They kicked all those people out of their homes? For a
mall
?”

“They were bought out, but yes, quite a few were forced out against their will.”

“But … why didn't all those people get together and say forget it!”

“They tried.”

“So?”

“So in the end it comes down to the law, and the law states that so long as the government pays just compensation, it can acquire properties for public use. There's usually not much you can do about it except sue for greater compensation.”

“I can't
believe
that!”

Hudson nodded. “Originally it was designed for use in national emergencies or for building railroads … that sort of thing. So instead of jogging a railroad track around privately owned parcels, they could run straight through them. Unfortunately, governments now exercise eminent domain for things like malls and parking lots.”

“That absolutely stinks.”

He nodded and took a sip of tea. “Goldie Danali would agree with you.”

“Goldie Danali? Who's that?”

“A woman who used to live on the corner of Cook and Miller. She had a cute little place, white picket fence, flowers … the kind of house you get a real warm feeling from just walking by.”

“So she didn't want to move and they made her anyway?”

“More than that. She had a job at the courthouse, which as you know is right across the street. And since she had problems with her legs, she went everywhere in a little motorized golf cart.”

“Oh, you've got to be kidding.”

“About the golf cart?”

“No! About them making a lady who's basically in a wheelchair move! How could they do that?”

Hudson gave me a wry smile. “They ‘relocated’ her in the name of the community. The community, they said, needed a mall. The irony is, they can't seem to rent the offices on the spot where Goldie Danali's house was.” He grinned. “Rumor is they're haunted.”

“No! By Goldie?”

“That's right. She died shortly after they forced her out.”

“Aw, come on. You're making this up…”

He put up a hand like he was taking an oath. “On my honor.”

I thought about it a minute, then said, “Well, it would serve them right if it's haunted. But still. If they kicked a lady in a wheelchair out of her house, there's no way they're going to let Mrs. Willawago keep hers.”

He nodded. “I figured this had to do with the proposed rec center.” He took the newspaper out from under his chair and flipped it open to the community section. Beneath the heading NEW
REC
CENTER
GAINS
SUPPORT was a picture of Coralee in her patriotic suit watching attentively as a man held a pointer to a drawing. There was also a picture of Leland Hawking giving a “spirited rebuttal,” and to the side of the article was a diagram of the “proposed improvements”: batting cages, café, and rec center.

I studied it and couldn't help thinking, Wow…these
proposed improvements look great! And then there it was again, that voice in my ear.
Yeah
, it whispered.
You and Marissa would use this a lot. And what do you care if ol' Willy-whaddya-know has to move? You try to help her and she doesn't believe you! She practically called you a liar…

From the base of my neck, halfway down my back, and then around my chest, I felt a core-chilling shiver. Like my brain had touched something very cold and was sending it down to cage my heart.

It was a frightening feeling. My heart began beating faster—like it was banging against the cage, trying to break free. So I shook off the voice and tried to get my mind back on track. “So explain this,” I said to Hudson. “Why would Coralee Lyon hold a clandestine meeting in the kitchen of Leland Hawking, Esquire's office, telling him to speak out
against
the rec center at the city council meeting?”

Hudson's bushy white eyebrows shot up. “Is that what you heard and saw?” He pointed to the newspaper. “This councilwoman told this lawyer to argue against the takeover?”

“That's right.”

He took a brownie and sat back. “All right. I need details.”

I felt the fear of the chill start to lift from my heart as I threw myself into telling the story of how I'd been walking Captain Patch and noticed Coralee's car and figured out the license plate and started sniffing around. And let me tell you, I gathered a good head of steam telling him
how ol' Fanny Flag told Esquire Eyes that it was a
good
thing that the Stones didn't want to sell and how he started worrying and she started insisting. By the time I was describing how she'd snuck out the back door to get to her car, my mouth was like a runaway train, and when I finally put the brakes on and quit talking, I didn't feel the chill at all anymore.

I felt good.

Hudson, though, just sat there chewing endlessly on a bite of brownie.

So finally, I said, “See? It doesn't make any sense. But I heard what I heard and I saw what I saw, and it wasn't out of context or anything else, in case that's what you're wondering.”

“No, no. I'm not wondering that.” He shook his head, and for the first time since I'd met him, he looked stumped. “I'm wondering why she would say that when the more expensive the project becomes to the taxpayer, the worse the project — and Ms. Lyon — looks to the community.”

“What do you mean, the more expensive it becomes?”

“Well, when the city was acquiring land for the mall, some of the homeowners didn't like the amount of money they were being offered. So the homeowners sued, and a lot of them wound up with substantially more money.”

“So … so the only reason you'd want to fight city hall is if you
owned
property on Hopper Street.”

He shrugged. “
Or
if you didn't want the development going in next to your property,
or
if…,” but then he
got what I was saying. He faced me, his eyes opened wide.

“That's got to be it!” I whispered. “Coralee Lyon owns property on Hopper Street!”

He shook his head. “But that would be a conflict of interest. Probably even illegal.”

I jumped up. “I bet she owns that lawyer's office! I bet Leland Hawking is renting from her.”

Hudson pointed to the newspaper. “But it says that
he
owns that property. That
he's
made a lot of improvements to it.”

“Well, what if they went in on it together?
Or
what if she owns one of those other houses on Hopper? There are two vacant lots and two run-down houses with wrecked cars all over the yards—we don't know anything about who owns those!”

Hudson nodded. “If she has
any
financial stake in them, she should have recused herself from the proceedings instead of pushing them along.” He stood up, too, and said, “The truth does have an interesting habit of finding its way to the surface, but in this case I think it could use a little help. And since property ownership is a matter of public record, why don't you go do your dog-walking job and let me see what I can find out.”

“Really?” I tugged on the leash, waking the Captain, who was snoring under my chair. “You know how to look it up?”

“I'm going to start by making some phone calls.”

“Well, when you find something out, call me!” I said, heading down the walkway.

“Will do!”

On my way back to Hopper Street it hit me that I wasn't ticked off anymore. I just wanted to get back and tell Mrs. Willawago what we'd figured out. So I ran the whole way, and when I got to the Train House and spotted a white pickup truck in the driveway, I remembered that Mrs. Willawago was talking to a reporter.

So much the better! I'd tell them both what we suspected.

I went right in, taking Captain Patch with me. And when I found Mrs. Willawago and the reporter in the living room, I blurted out, “Guess what!”

But just as their heads are turning to face me, there's a mind-jolting
crash
, and shards of glass shoot through the room.

Mrs. Willawago screams and drops to the floor while the reporter dives for cover behind a chair. I yank Patch back and hide behind the hallway wall. My eyes are cranked wide, my heart is whacking against my chest, and when I peek out around the corner, I see that the French door now looks like the mouth of a glass shark.

And then I see a big rock sitting on the carpet right in front of it.

I jet down the hall, shove Captain Patch in a bedroom, then hurry over to Mrs. Willawago, who's holding her heart and breathing like she's just run a mile. “Are you all right?” I ask her.

“Did somebody
shoot
?” she asks back, her voice all shaky.

The reporter is half standing behind the chair, and his
eyes are like little planets doing a half orbit of his head, back and forth, back and forth.

“No,” I tell her. “It was just a rock.”

But even from across the room I can see that this is not just some wayward rock.

It's a message.

The rock that's crashed through the French door is smooth and shaped like a large, flat egg. And on it, written in black marker, is SELL
OR
SUFER
.

For a minute it's like I'm trying to make out a license plate again, because the words are kind of crammed together. And either it's a puzzle I'm not getting or a word's misspelled.

And what kind of moron busts your window with a misspelled threat?

But just as I'm deciding that, yeah, this was definitely a misspelled threat, the doorbell rings. And before anyone can react to
that
, Mrs. Stone comes busting through the front door in her Birkenstocks and socks, shouting, “Annie! Annie!” She spots her and cries, “Look what somebody threw!”

She's flushed. Out of breath. Shaking.

And she's holding a smooth, egg-shaped rock.

“It says sell or suffer!” she cries. Then she sees all the broken glass. “Did you get one, too?”

So I nod and show Mrs. Willawago the rock that had crashed through her French door. “You got the same message.”

“Why… it's misspelled!” Mrs. Willawago says, blinking at me. Then she looks at Mrs. Stone's. “So is yours!”

“Let me see,” the reporter says.

So there they all are, in a huddle around these rocks, and I don't know—something about it seems funny: (a) someone's just busted their windows with a menacing threat and they're worried about the spelling? And (b) how embarrassing would that be? To toss a rock through someone's window and misspell the message? I mean, what if they'd written CELL
OR
SUFFER
!
O
R
MOVE
OR
DYE
!

Anyway, the good thing about it is that Mrs. Willawago and the reporter don't seem scared anymore—they're actually laughing about how the person who'd thrown the rock must be an uneducated oaf.

Mrs. Stone finally stops them, saying, “Look at all this glass!”

The reporter nods. “That must've been a very old window — definitely not safety glass.”

“It could have killed you!” Mrs. Stone says, her eyes all wide. She wags her rock and says, “And this one could've killed Marty! He was just going out the slider—it missed him by inches!”

The reporter nods. “You ladies should call the police.”

So Mrs. Willawago goes to the phone, saying, “I can't imagine that whoever did this thinks it'll make us move. Good Lord, do they really believe they can get away with this?”

Now, while Mrs. Willawago's on the phone, the reporter produces a small notebook and says, “You must be Teri Stone, Annie's neighbor?”

“That's right.”

“She told me a little about you. I'm Cal Torres, ma'am. From the
Times.
Did you say your husband's name is Marty?”

Mrs. Stone nods.

“The two of you have lived next door how long?”

“Twelve years.”

The reporter glances over at Mrs. Willawago talking on the phone in the kitchen, then turns to face Mrs. Stone. “I'm going to do everything I can to help you. What's going on here is just wrong.”

“Oh, thank you!” Mrs. Stone says, her face smoothing back. “You don't know what that means to us.”

Mrs. Willawago's back a minute later, saying, “The police are on their way.” She turns to the reporter. “Will you stay?”

“Yes, ma'am! And I'm going to ask my editor to give this story some front-page coverage.”

Now, something about knowing that the police are coming always makes me want to get going. Maybe it's just in Santa Martina, I don't know, but around here if you see someone rob a bank or something, the cops won't let you say, He went thataway! First they've got to know who you are and where you live and what you had for breakfast.

Well, okay. The breakfast part has only come up once, but the other questions come up every time, and in my case they're questions that make me very nervous.

And since I didn't feel like trying to figure out how to avoid their questions, and since the police station is about
ten seconds by squad car from Hopper Street and I didn't have enough time before they arrived to explain my theory about Coralee Lyon possibly owning property on Hopper Street, I just told Mrs. Willawago, “I, uh, I've got to get going.” Then I added, “Oh—I put Captain Patch in your bedroom.”

“In my bedroom?” she asks all kind of hyper, then takes off down the hall. So I grab my skateboard and backpack and hurry east on Hopper Street—the way I think the police
won't
be coming.

There's no blue car lurking behind Leland Hawking, Esquire's, so I just keep on trucking, heading north on Miller Street with one eye on the lookout for cop cars while my brain tries to make sense of things.

The trouble, though, is that the more I think about it, the more things
don't
make sense. The rock-through-the-window business was messing everything up. I mean, if Coralee Lyon wanted people to resist selling their property because she owned something on Hopper and resisting would mean she'd get more money for it, well, that didn't go along with ‘sell or suffer.’ The rocks had been a real threat. Done by someone who was worried that Mrs. Willawago and Mrs. Stone
wouldn't
sell. But from what I'd overheard in Leland Hawking's kitchen, Coralee
wasn't
worried about that.